Substantial efforts have been made in recent years to combat malicious attacks against personal computers. One particular emphasis of these efforts has been to protect against inadvertently loading and initiating executable code that is designed to act against users' best interests.
Computer viruses and other harmful code can be transferred in many ways, depending only on the imagination and ingenuity of those responsible for the viruses. Perhaps one of the simplest ways to transfer such content is to somehow fool a computer user into thinking he or she is initiating a legitimate program or is taking some other non-harmful action.
The Internet poses one of the biggest risks of obtaining viruses and other malicious content. The Internet is a vast public network, with very few inherent user protections. Nearly anyone can connect to the Internet, and it is relatively easy to hide one's identity when communicating over the Internet. Furthermore, Internet users are often relatively unaware of the specific dangers that can result from their actions, and can thus become easy targets.
Although significant progress has been made in protecting users against these threats, there remains an ongoing need to protect against various forms of dangerous content that might be inadvertently obtained or referenced from the Internet and other sources.